


two sheep counted, but not enough to sleep

by batofgoodintent (crownedcrusader)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sleep Deprivation, Sort Of, bad sleep habits, bruce wayne attempting parenting, little to no dialogue, so heres a tribute to the gap between nine and twenty-something, teenage dickie, teenage dickie specifically bc hes often overlooked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-12-31 22:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12142104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcrusader/pseuds/batofgoodintent
Summary: Dick hasn't been sleeping. It's a problem Bruce should have addressed by now.





	two sheep counted, but not enough to sleep

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: I was originally seeing this as a teen titans fic but im also considering young justice, i dont know. it works for a lot of universes.
> 
> Also, this work mentions something called polyphasic sleep cycles which are a good guess as to how the bats actually sleep... tumblr user toflyandfall made a really cool post about it, in addition to Dick's canon comic relationship to sleep. 
> 
> http://toflyandfall.tumblr.com/post/142648532701/detective-comics-490-categorically-dick-and

It was probably _fairly_ normal for Bruce’s fifteen-year-old son to be up at all hours.

When he started to feel like a bad parent, he tried to remind himself that most teenagers had sleep schedules that were totally up in the air. It made Bruce feel a little better in the face of Alfred’s pointed glances and sharp tone about how _Master Dick had insisted on a caffeinated beverage tonight, sir, shall I serve it as you like it?_

Those lectures had become less pointed as of late, and Bruce had allowed the warnings to sink to the back of his mind.

Besides—Dick didn’t seem to be crumbling under the pressure.

And yet, some nights he remembered Alfred’s warnings better than others. Generally only when they became a problem—like watching Dick’s head bob up and down when he was trying to stay awake at the breakfast table, or when he came down to the cave at ten at night looking like he’d just woken up half a minute ago.

Or nights like tonight, when Dick had seemed distracted and slow on patrol. At the time, he’d put it out of his head and delegated his partner to smaller tasks—ones that carried less risk if he had slower reflexes than usual.

While he hadn’t considered it in enough depth to truly have thought about it, he knew that if he had, he would have simply ignored the information, or figured out the reason why and discarded it from there. After all, Dick had pulled two full all-nighters this week, and had had two very late nights between them.

And yet, despite the likelihood of teenagers and late nights being normal, Bruce found himself focusing on that _last_ bit of information. The part where, by all rights, his fifteen-year-old should have been completely wiped out. While normally working all night was at least made up for with easy days following them, the last few days, Dick had been meeting up with the Titans or working with Babs on a case in Gotham.

If his math was correct, Dick couldn’t have had more than a dozen hours of sleep between the last four days—and that was a generous estimate, assuming that Dick would have grabbed a nap while traveling.

The more Bruce thought about it, the more it troubled him.

Especially considering the scene before him.

Because instead of reveling in the first night in days that he’d been able to get a good night’s sleep, Dick’s light was on.

The door was closed, of course—something that had been happening more and more often, lately—and Bruce couldn’t help but wonder if he’d simply fallen asleep with the light on.

It was better than the alternative—that Dick was still up, despite having no real reason to be—but it was far from ideal.

It meant that even if Dick was asleep, he must have fallen asleep with the light on because he was too tired to get ready for bed. Or worse, that he’d fallen asleep while reading, or working on his laptop. Or worse still—perhaps he wasn’t in bed at all, and had left his light on to pretend he was still here, rather than out and about.

It was that last idea that made Bruce’s hand hover over the doorknob.

He had no reason to suspect it, necessarily—nothing other than the knowledge that he and other young heroes had been spending more and more time together, and that Dick had been asking for more and more solo patrols.

Bruce frowned at the possibility, then his lips settled into a thin line, his mind finally made up.

He turned the knob and gently pushed the door open, fully expecting to find an empty bed and an open window.

Instead, he found a messy bed, an open laptop, three massive, open books, and his son curled up with an old throw-blanket over him instead of his covers.

Bruce stared, expression blank even when no one was there to see it.

For a while, he simply stood in the doorway, not entirely sure what it was he was looking at. Part of him wanted to think that Dick had simply fallen asleep working on whatever it was that he was working on—but the throw blanket was no coincidence, not with the way Dick had burrowed into it.

It took a moment, but finally Bruce realized what it looked like. And, more than that, what it _reminded_ him of.

It was clear that he’d been working and had been planning to get _back_ to working when he woke up—the open books and laptop were in direct contrast to the blanket. It meant that he’d planned on going to sleep for a bit, but not even for long enough that it would be worth it to put his books away. Or perhaps he was simply too tired to put them away and had barely had the energy to bundle himself up in the throw blanket.

Bruce leaned against the door frame, a slow frown making its way onto his face.

No, he realized, noticing the phone just near Dick’s nightstand. Just far enough away that he had to get up to turn it off—the place he always kept it when he was using it as an alarm in the morning.

This was _planned_. Worse than that, Bruce knew exactly whose plans Dick was copying.

Bruce remembered when _he_ was first starting polyphasic sleep cycles. The leap between getting just a few hours a night, to taking a few short naps throughout the day to keep him going with a fresh mind. While neither was particularly healthy, Bruce had at least been an adult when he started implementing them regularly.

Dick was only fifteen.

Bruce rubbed the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. Perhaps worst of all, he didn’t know _why_ Dick was doing this. This was the first night Dick had been able to take off and catch up on sleep—he should have been taking advantage of that. Not staying up and working on… Were those books on the criminal justice system?

With a soft sigh through his nose, Bruce finally walked into the room, keeping his footsteps almost silent, so as not to wake the sleeping teenager. Then, gently, he pulled the blanket higher over Dick’s shoulder, where it had fallen and invited the chilly night air.

The books, he noted, were about the criminal justice system—with a range of topics from the varying levels of sentencing for particular crimes, to what variation existed within the crimes themselves, and the legal limitations of police officers.

He hummed. Certainly a good read for a vigilante, he supposed—but Bruce had taught Dick most of this already.

Bruce debated tapping the laptop screen to rouse it from sleep mode. On one hand, it would be an invasion of Dick’s privacy. Whatever he was working on, he was doing it in secret, not letting Bruce know on his own terms. And a huge part of Bruce wanted to respect that. But the rest made him want to know what was so worth sacrificing sleep for.

He glanced down at Dick, who was still fast asleep. Slight shadows had gathered under his eyes, even while he slept, and Bruce felt a surge of guilt.

Fifteen, he reminded himself. His son was only fifteen.

And fifteen was old enough to make his own choices and keep his privacy, he decided, then gently shut the laptop. He dog-eared the books then put them on the nightstand, too, keeping quiet enough not to wake his son.

There wasn’t much he could do beyond that, though.

Bruce frowned, wondering what was keeping Dick from just sleeping for the rest of the night and working on this later. But then, he remembered that there was an intensely full day tomorrow. Dick was supposed to be interning with someone at Wayne Enterprises and learning how to run the company in case of an emergency. Something that Bruce knew Dick didn’t want to do, but hadn’t actively tried to back out of.

The day was supposed to be full until dinner, with only an hour or two’s break before patrol. Time that Dick usually spent with some extra acrobatics training, ‘to keep himself sharp,’ he always insisted. Old arguments about overtraining aside, Bruce couldn’t help but frown.

Whatever Dick was trying to learn about in his free time, it was important to him. Important enough that he was willing to go on a new pattern of sleep to accommodate it.

Bruce hovered next to him for a while, just wondering what it was he should do as Dick’s father. But after a long few minutes of deliberation, he sent a quick text to the manager who was supposed to meet with Dick tomorrow morning. He vouched for pushing back the meeting until next week, claiming that his son had come down with something.

That done, he took Dick’s phone and used his son’s own thumbprint—held delicately over the sensor—to activate it. Then, he took off the alarm and wrote a note telling him that the meeting was cancelled so there was no point in getting up early. He left it as the first thing Dick’s thumbscan would open in the morning, then set it back on the nightstand.

Bruce turned around and started for the door. But before he could get more than five steps though, a breeze blew through a half-cracked window, and he hesitated.

Still moving absolutely silently, he grabbed two extra throw-blankets, then spread them out over his son. Once he was sure Dick was still fast asleep, he leaned close, moved the (getting too long) hair out of Dick’s eyes, and pressed a kiss against his forehead.

“Get some rest,” he said, voice in that uncertain space between Bruce Wayne and Batman. It was as much a plea as an order.

Dick, predictably, responded with nothing but a snore.

Bruce flicked off the light, then quietly closed the door on the way out. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, undermining Dick’s attempts at splicing his sleep schedule to two brief naps a day. But he was still growing, still learning, still only fifteen.

Bruce needed to remember that.

Remembering the books’ intense subjects, and Dick’s willingness to take on any task Bruce placed on him—he wondered if they didn’t _both_ need the reminder.

Dick was growing up. It was true, no matter how resistant Bruce was to the idea.

But there was no need to rush it more than they already were. There was still time left for Dick to be fifteen and happy. Still time before he had to carry Gotham and the world on his shoulders.

Bruce hoped there were many years left before that day finally came.


End file.
